The science behind Brainwave Entrainment





Scientific papers about brainwave entrainment



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Center for Arts, Science and Technology from the MIT

Work by Judith Becker, Ph.D.


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Work by Judith Becker, Ph.D.

Director of Centers for SE Asian Studies and World Performance Studies and Professor of Musicology, University of Michigan

Judith Becker, an authority on the music of Southeast Asia, teaches ethnomusicology at the University of Michigan. She was director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, a unit of the International Institute at the University of Michigan for the past seven years. She is a co-founder of the Center for World Performance Studies at the University of Michigan and was its first director.

She has written numerous articles and is the author of three books. Her most recent book, Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Trancing, received the Alan Merriam award from the Society for Ethnomusicology for the best book in ethnomusicology published during the year 2004.

Dr. Becker's current research focuses on the relationships between music, emotion and ecstasy in institutionalized religious contexts and in secular contexts. She is exploring the common ground between humanistic, cultural, anthropological approaches and scientific, cognitive, psychological approaches.
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Work by Thomas Budzynski, Ph.D.

Thomas Budzynski graduated first from the University of Detroit with an Electrical Engineering degree and worked in aerospace for 7 years. He was the inertial navigation supervisor on the SR71 Blackbird project at Area 51. Later he earned a master's and Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Dr. Budzynski was one of the pioneers in the area of biofeedback, and has developed a number of biofeedback instruments along with John Picchiottino. In addition to on-going research with Johann Stoyva at the University of Colorado Medical Center, Tom started a private biofeedback clinic in Denver with Charles Adler and Kirk Peffer circa 1972. He later managed the clinic for 16 years before re-entering the academic world again as an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington.

He continues research in the areas of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, academic performance enhancement and cognitive enhancement in the elderly with his able associate and wife Helen Kogan Budzynski, Ph.D. who is a Professor Emeritus at the university in the School of Nursing. A licensed psychologist in Washington, Dr. Budzynski sees selected patients for neurotherapy at his home office.
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Work by Jon Frederick, Ph.D.

Jon Frederick's dissertation research compared the EEG effects of rhythmic visual stimulation alone, auditory stimulation, and combined auditory and visual stimulation. I am currently involved in two research projects at the University of Minnesota . One study measures human perceptual acuity in introspectively discriminating between EEG states. Another study investigates the usefulness of EEG measurements in assessing disinhibitory psychopathology, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), substance use and dependence, and antisocial behaviors in adults and children.

Brainwave entrainment is intriguing to me because it presents the possibility of decoding the meaning of the brain's rhythms by observing the perceptual or behavioral effects of stimuli that enhance or interfere with these rhythms.
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Work by Emil Jovanov, Ph.D.

Emil Jovanov is an Associate Professor at Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Dr. Jovanov's research interests include wearable physiological monitoring, ubiquitous and mobile computing, biomedical signal processing and modeling. He serves as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine and as a member of Editorial Board of Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback. Dr. Jovanov served as a Program Secretary of the International Symposium and Workshop on Scientific Bases of Consciousness (Belgrade, 1997).

Dr. Jovanov has been working on physiological correlates and models of altered states of consciousness for more than ten years. He investigated heart and brain activity during meditation, relaxation techniques, musicogenic states, and healer/healee interactions. Dr. Jovanov developed several environments for processing, visualization, and perceptualization of physiological signals. His recent research is focused on changes of autonomous nervous system created by yogic breathing techniques and chanting.
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Work by Edward W. Large, Ph.D.

Edward W. Large is an Associate Professor at the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University. He serves as Associate Editor of the journal Music Perception. He serves on the scientific advisory board of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function. He is also the founder of Circular Logic, a music software company based in Boca Raton, FL.

Dr. Large's research addresses the question of how the brain responds to complex, temporally structured sequences of events, such as music and speech. His research program combines dynamical systems modeling, behavioral experimentation, neurophysiology and neuroimaging. Current projects include perception of rhythm, perception of pitch, perception of tonality, perception of song, and emotional responses to music.

Recently, Dr. Large reported the discovery of human brain activity that anticipates events in rhythms such as those found in music and speech. He observed that peaks in the power of cortical brain activity predict both the timing and intensity of events such as notes (in music) and syllables (in speech). Moreover, when some events are unexpectedly left out of a sequence, the timing and power of cortical activity remains unchanged, as if an event actually appeared.
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Work by Scott Makeig, Ph.D.

Scott Makeig received a B.A. from Berkeley, "Self in Experience," and a Ph.D. from UCSD in "Music Psychobiology." His research has focused on application of advanced signal processing models to human brain dynamics data (EEG, MEG, fMRI, ECOG).

He and colleagues were the first to apply independent component analysis (ICA) to EEG data (1996) and, with Martin McKeown, to fMRI data (1998). He has developed, with Arnaud Delorme and colleagues, and distributes the widely-used open source EEGLAB and FMRLAB environments for electrophysiological and functional imaging data analysis.

The UCSD Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience, which he now directs, develops and applies new computational approaches to modeling macroscopic brain dynamics, including current applications to the study of memory, emotion, attention, learning, autism, aging, epilepsy, and realtime cognitive monitoring and control.
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Work by Melinda Maxfield, Ph.D.

Melinda C. Maxfield is an independent researcher focusing on sonic entrainment, shamanism, and healing. A former research report writer for Encyclopaedia Britannica, Dr. Maxfield's work has lead her around the globe lecturing and demonstrating the positive benefits of applied sonic entrainment. She has presented "Journey Work", sonic entrainment workshops in North America, South America, Asia, and Europe.

Dr. Maxfield is vice-president of the Maxfield Foundation, an organization supporting research in the fields related to the understanding and treatment of cancer, with special emphasis on leukemia. She is also on the board of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, and executive director of the Angeles Arrien Foundation for Cross-Cultural Education and Research.
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Work by Harold Russell, Ph.D.

Harold L. Russell is a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Galveston, Texas. He is an adjunct research professor in the Department of Gerontology and Health Promotion at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

Dr. Russell's current research is focused on investigating the use of EEG-driven auditory and visual stimulation as a safe, effective and inexpensive means of improving brain functioning in children, adolescents or adults at different socioeconomic levels.

About the potential outcomes of the symposium, Dr. Russell writes, "Combining current technology with the creativity, musical and scientific knowledge available at this symposium could result in the finding of increasingly effective and inexpensive ways of using music on an everyday basis as a practical and widely acceptable tool to improve brain functioning."
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Work by David Spiegel, M.D.

David Spiegel is the Jack, Lulu and Sam Willson Professor in the School of Medicine and Associate Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California, where he is also Director of the Center on Stress and Health. In addition, he is Medical Director of the Stanford Center for Integrative Medicine at Stanford Medical Center, which provides supportive care for medically ill patients.

Dr. Spiegel is Immediate Past President of the American College of Psychiatrists and Past President of the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. A Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, he has received the 2004 Marmor Award from the American Psychiatric Association for research in biopsychosocial psychiatry, the Edward A. Strecker, M.D. Award from the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital for his contributions to clinical psychiatry in the U.S., and the Hilgard Award from the International Society of Hypnosis for his research contributions to the field of medical hypnosis.

He serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals and was Editor of the American Psychiatric Press' Progress in Psychiatry series. He is the author of 8 books and 394 journal articles and book chapters on stress, trauma, dissociation, psycho-oncology, hypnosis, psychotherapy, and mind/body medicine. Dr. Spiegel received his B.A. from Yale and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He completed his residency training in psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center and Cambridge Hospital and a fellowship at the Laboratory of Community Psychiatry, all at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
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Work by M. Barry Sterman, Ph.D.

Dr. M. Barry Sterman is Professor Emeritus in the departments of Neurobiology and Bio-Behavioral Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine. He launched the field of clinical neurotherapy with his pioneering studies of EEG operant conditioning in animals and humans for the treatment of seizures. His major research interests have included; neural and behavioral mechanisms in epilepsy, neural substrates and cognitive correlates of EEG rhythms, self-regulation of the EEG, basic neural mechanisms of sleep regulation, and quantitative EEG Assessment. Papers written by Dr. Sterman have been published in the journals Science, Brain Research, EEG and Clinical Neurophysiology, Experimental Neurology, Journal of Internal Medicine, Clinical Electroencephalography, Biofeedback and Self-Regulation, Brain Topography, Clinical Neurophysiology, Journal of Neurotherapy, and in the Handbook of Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology.
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Work by Concetta Tomaino, D.A., MT-BC:

Concetta "Connie" Tomaino is the Director of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, and Vice President for Music Therapy at Beth Abraham Family of Health Services, Beth Abraham Hospital, New York.

Dr. Tomaino is internationally recognized for her research in the clinical applications of music and neurologic rehabilitation. She has lectured on music therapy throughout the world, and received the Award of Accomplishment from Music Therapists for Peace at the United Nations.

Dr. Tomaino holds a Masters and Doctor of Arts in Music Therapy from New York University, and graduated from SUNY at Stony Brook with a BA in Music Performance (her instrument is the trumpet), a minor in psychology and sciences, and a commitment to the emerging field of music therapy.
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Work by Udo Will, Ph.D.

Udo Will studied music, sociology, and neuroscience. He holds PhDs in both musicology and neurobiology and is professor of cognitive ethnomusicology at Ohio State University. He currently leads research projects on cognitive aspects of music performances in oral cultures, on rhythm and melody processing by the human brain, and on a comparison of the cognitive architecture of music and language production.

He is co-founder, together with M. Clayton (Milton Keynes) and I. Cross ( Cambridge )) of the "Music and Entrainment" Network, an international research group sponsored by a 3-year grant from the British Academy.
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